Mike Huckabee Literally Thought April Ryan Was Speaking Literally About Beheading His Daughter

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is a congenital liar, and her condition is terminal. We appreciate how difficult that probably is for her loved ones, but they should just hold a telethon or something. Sanders's father, Mike Huckabee, chose instead to make some drunk dad jokes on Twitter yesterday.

Huckabee accused journalist April Ryan of literally threatening his daughter's life. Although this is funnier than most of his usual tweets, he was actually serious. He shared a Red State article with the headline "CNN's April Ryan Says Sarah Sanders' Head Should Be 'Lopped Off.'" This is not actually what Ryan said or meant because she's not a homicidal maniac with a bone saw collection.

We spent our morning digging through Wonkette's archives until we discovered our post from yesterday where we included the video of Ryan's remarks. We'll share it again because we think it provides a helpful context of sanity.

We'll also transcribe the words in case watching a black woman speak is too triggering for common Huckabees.

RYAN: Not only does [Sanders] not have any credibility left, she lied. She out and out lied and the people, the American people, can't trust her. They can't trust what's said from the president's mouthpiece, spokesperson, from the people's house. Therefore, she should be let go. She should be fired. End of story. When there is a lack of credibility there, you have to start and start lopping the heads off. It's 'Fire Me Thursday' or 'Fire Me Good Friday,' — she needs to go."

We're going to lean heavily on all our comparative literature training and interpret Ryan's statement as calling for Sanders's professional death, not her actual, physical demise. We conclude this because Ryan says "[Sanders] should be fired," and since we aren't Amelia Bedelia, we don't think Ryan literally wants to set Sanders on fire.

Ryan is a bright woman, but she likely isn't the first to invoke decapitation to colorfully describe someone losing their job. You've probably heard the term "heads will roll." You might've employed the services of a head hunter and expected them to deliver you qualified applicants for an open position and not someone's actual head. We know conservatives aren't that interested in good-faith arguments because of the whole recent "infanticide" scam, but this is especially absurd and shameless.

Huckabee also expressed contempt for Senator Mitt Romney, who was a former rival for the Republican presidential nomination. (We were just as realistically a "former rival" to Chris Evans for the part of Captain America.) In a relatively harsh statement yesterday, Romney said he was "sickened at the extent and pervasiveness of dishonesty and misdirection by individuals in the highest office in the land, including the president." Unless you're hard of lying, it's pretty clear Romney is also calling out Sanders, whose core competencies are "dishonesty and misdirection."

It's a little disturbing how much Huckabee's response reads like a deranged tweet from Donald Trump. But the president of the United States regularly tweets out crap like this, so very little matters anymore. On the upside, this morning, Huckabee was back to his reliable brand of really bad jokes.

See, "flip-flops" are a form of casual footwear commonly worn at the beach. It can also refer to an "abrupt change in policy or position," which Romney has been accused of frequently making. What do you know? Huckabee does comprehend figurative language.

Stephen Robinson is a writer and social kibbitzer based in Seattle. However, he's more reliable for food and drink recommendations in Portland, where he spends a lot of time for theatre work. His co-adaptation of "Jitterbug Perfume" by Tom Robbins is playing NOW at Pioneer Square's Cafe Nordo. All Wonketters welcome.

You guys, hi, hello, it is almost the holiday weekend, so we are going to share you a real video posted last night by "Doctor" Sebastian "Don't Call Me A Nazi" Gorka, that hilarious old knucklecuck. We guess now that he had to give up (or gave up voluntarily!) his Fox News contract, he just makes videos for the Twitter. Hoo ... ray?

Anyway, Gorka is super-excited that Donald Trump issued that order last night, giving Bill Barr all kinds of new powers to expose the Deep State for what it is and PROVE once and for all that the gremlins who live inside Trump's diarrhea are correct when they say Hillary ordered the Deep State to do an illegal witch hunt to Trump, yadda yadda yadda, you've seen these people huff paint before, we don't have to type it all.

Here is the video, after which Wonkette will either transcribe it OR we will provide our own dramatic interpretation. Which one will it be? We don't know! Would you be able to tell the difference between the two? We don't know!

We want to say right here at the outset that we hate Julian Assange. Aside from the sexual assault allegations against him, and aside from the fact that he's just a generally stinky and loathsome person who reportedly smeared poop on the walls at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, while reportedly not taking care of his cat, an innocent creature, he acted as Russia's handmaiden during the 2016 election, in order to further Russia's campaign to steal it for Donald Trump. All signs point to his campaign being a success!

So we are justifiably happy when bad things happen to Julian Assange. We are happy his name is shit the world over, and that any reputation WikiLeaks used to have for being on the side of freedom and transparency has been stuffed down the toilet where it belongs. We are happy he looked like such a sad-ass loser when the Ecuadorian embassy finally kicked him out and he was arrested.

And quite frankly, we were OK with the initial charge against him recently unsealed in the Eastern District of Virginia. If you'll remember, he was charged with trying to help Chelsea Manning hack a password into the Defense Department, which is not what journalists do. Journalists do not drive the get-away car for sources. Journalists do not hold their sources' hair back while they're stealing classified intel. Assange is essentially accused of doing all that.

Now, put all that aside. Because -- and this is key -- journalists do publish secrets they are provided by sources. That's First Amendment, chapter and verse, American as fucking apple pie and fast-food-induced diabetes. And that is what much of the superseding indictment of Assange unsealed yesterday was about. (And nope, it wasn't about anything regarding Assange's ratfucking the 2016 election or Hillary's emails. Why would the Trump Justice Department prosecute anything about that? It's all about the older Chelsea Manning stuff, the stuff the Obama Justice Department considered charging Assange with, but ultimately declined, because of that little thing called the First Amendment.)